I know that several of the readers of this blog are very concerned with unity between churches and church groups, particularly between the various restoration movement fellowships. Let me share something with you that I read today from Dan at Cerulean Sanctum:

I go to Clear Mountain Community Church in Williamsburg, OH. It’s an independent Pentecostal church that is one of the most unusual churches I’ve ever encountered. What makes it unique is that it is a church merge (as opposed to a split–that in itself is rarer), but it’s the merger of a Pentecostal church and a Church of Christ. Yeah, you read that right. I’ve been there a year-and-a-half and I still can’t believe it.

If that COC can find enough common ground with a Pentacostal church to merge with them, why in the world can’t the rest of us in the restoration movement, with all that we share, come together?

I came across this at Mike Cope’s blog the other day:

I’ve mentioned before the three views one can have of parents: a child’s view (my parents are perfect and have no faults); an adolescent’s view (my parents are embarrassing imbeciles); and a mature adult’s view (my parents have strengths and faults).
Those are the same views one can have of a religious heritage.

It got me thinking of us ICOC & ex-ICOC folk.
It seems to me that it’s time for us to grow up.
There are some out there who are still children. The ICOC was all good, nothing wrong. The past 3 years were from Satan, a distraction and it’s time to get back to it. All of it – the discipling, the hierarchy, the evangelist control, the ‘we’re the kingdom’ mindset, everything.
Others are like adolescents. There was never anything good in the ICOC. This is from folks who were immersed in it for years, but now it’s the spawn of Satan. Everything that comes out of an ICOC church is evil, their motives are selfish, they are out for your money and anyone still involved is dumber than a box of rocks and duped.
Time for some of us to grow up. Our ICOC heritage is a blessing and a curse. Many were saved, the gospel was preached, many nations were reached, HOPEworldwide was formed, much good was done. But we must be honest, we were pretty stupid, arrogant, hurtful and even duped at times too. Let’s learn from our mistakes and even laugh at our former foolishness, but please, let’s not pretend it was only either a bed of roses or a torture chamber, OK?

I promised you some follow up on our UP process. Actually, this is more my reaction to the end of the process.
Wednesday night April 26th, after the church had a chance to voice their opinion on the UP via the Likert Scale vote, our minister sent an email out detailing the results and saying that since the congregation’s general opinion roughly mirrored the leadership’s, he would be sending an email to the Unity Porposal Group at noon the following day (the 28th) indicating our signing, unless there were objections.
It was at this point that my emotions went into overdrive. It felt that the careful deliberate process went into high gear all of a sudden. 15 hours from ‘vote’ to signature, after a month of deliberation! I had a hard time getting to sleep that night, my mind in overdrive about how we needed to anylize the results more, think about what they mean, etc. I did eventually sleep and after waking up I sent a hasty email back to him expressing my concern. I was also concerned that about those who were not at midweek and therefore hadn’t yet been heard.
His response, in a word, was “OK.” For one, he agreed that we should try to capture the remaining opinion on the matter, just as we had done on the elections for the board of directors. But he also indicated that if I felt strongly about it and it was going to make me struggle to act so quickly, we would wait. Even though in his mind the process had run it’s course and the results were not disputable, waiting a few days for my sake would not hurt anything.
After I had time to pray and to go over the numbers myself, I realized that there was no way to intrepet them other than the church, on average, was in favor of signing the proposal. Yes, those who were against felt more strongly about it, but averaging the scores still was in favor of signing. The ony way that the results would be changed is if nearly all the remaining votes were ‘not in favor’ and that was unlikely. My reaction was emotional not rational.
After my prayer time, and therefore in my right mind, I sent him this email:

Thank again for this, it does my heart good.
I could go through my analysis and my perspective, but I actually don’t think that’s as relevant. We can go over them later, it might be good. It will be good to talk, but I wanted to put my thoughts on ‘paper’ first because it helps me crystallize them.
The bottom line is that this decision hurts. Not because of anything anyone said or did or because I feel that the process failed, but actually probably more because it succeeded. We got the perspective of the church, and the church (on average, as a whole, more or less, however you want to put it) is in a very different place than I am. I told BG last night that the lack of questions was surprising to me and it just confirmed that I’m on the fringe. He responded “You and me both, brother”
And that’s what hurts, being – or at least feeling – outside of the mainstream, on the fringe. It hurts and it’s scary. If I’m on the edge, what happens if the edge moves and I don’t? If I’m on the edge, will I be left behind if the church moves? The UP showed me that there’s a feeling within our movement that we need to go back toward where we came from. I have no desire to go back in that direction personally. In some ways, though I treasure my heritage in many ways, I don’t feel like I, personally, want to be a part of ‘the ICOC’ anymore. The ‘vote’ (and I use quotes because I know it’s not really a vote, but I don’t know what else to call it) shows that most of my church does want to go back. And then a part of me wonders if I belong here.
PLEASE, don’t read anything more into that than just what is stated, I have no desire to leave or even explore leaving. I fact, on many levels I feel more tied to the CCOC than before. I’m just sharing my heart and my hurt. Given that, I think in addition to contacting the third of the church that did not get a chance to be heard, it might be prudent to contact the 10 folks who expressed strong feelings against (assuming we know who they are) and see how us moving forward with signing would make them feel. I just want to make sure that, while listening to the 99 we don’t leave the one behind. If you agree and I can help in that, I will. It may be appropriate to have one who feels as they do talk to them.
I have absolute confidence that this is what you intend – not leaving anyone behind. You have shown me nothing but grace through this disagreement and others, even though I’ve given you reasons not to, and for that example I am grateful. You’ve responded to my needs, even when born of emotion (and producing in you frustration 🙂 ) and made sure I’ve been heard. Thank you.
I understand that at the end of this, unless an overwhelming majority of the remaining folks are not in favor of signing, there is no logical reason we should not sign. Only if it is going to cause one of us on the -2 side harm, should we perhaps reconsider. Of course, what then if not signing does the same for someone else on the +2 side … Ugh.
I wish there was an alternate choice besides yes or no. I wish we could say ‘pass’, we are neither in favor or apposed and just want to keep doing what we’ve been doing. The Toronto Church has done the closest thing to that, but in doing so, of course, they are still saying ‘no’. You can read their gracious response to the UP here (bottom half of the page).
Anyway, I’ll work through my emotions and we will move on. I understand that means signing the agreement before the week is out.
Thanks again for listening.

I was the the only one to react and ask for the signing to be delayed. I was the only one to express this kind of frustration. Yet, because of the emotions of one of us, all of us waited. In this one action we lived out Romans 14, and for that my heart is pleased. Not so much that my emotional needs were taken care of, but that we are a church that would do that for one of us.
We got a chance to talk later and he reasured me that not only was my perspective valuable, it wasn’t unique. My take on the UP itself may have put me in a small subset of the church, but my thoughts on the broader and more important issues of unity, cooperation with other churches, reaching out to non-ICOC church and so on were shared by most if not all of the church. The differences were not fundamental but ones of interpretation and implementation. Not should we persue unity, relationships with other churches, etc, but how should we.
It’s interesting that , much like Pinakidion, I found that some share the same thoughts as I but came to very differnt conclusions. I was concerned that the UP would end up in division and a return to old ways and could not support it for that reason. Our minister had very similar concerns, yet felt it best to sign with that awareness and be watchful. I desire to build bridges to other RM churches and could not support the UP because I saw it as building walls between us, yet another in our fellowship who longs for such relationships as well was a strong supporter of the UP (writing in a +2.5, that’s how strongly they suppported it!) It’s amazing thing how people with the same vision & goals can come to very different conclusions on the methods.